George Blake, the Brit Double Agent And Traitor Whose Information Led To Deaths Of 100s Of UK Spies In Bid To Come Home

Adam Helliker at the British newspaper the Mirror offers a piece on British spy and traitor George Blake wanting to leave Russia, the country he defected to, and return to the UK.

 Living quietly in a small house in a pine forest not far from Moscow is a notorious traitor whom many in Britain may have assumed died years ago.

Yet George Blake is still alive, although his failing health may mean he won't reach his 97th birthday this year.

Few in this country are likely to mourn the fate of this half-blind old man when reminded that during the Cold War he gave the KGB the names of several hundred British agents, most of them living behind the Iron Curtain - ensuring their execution.

Now a rumour has spread among the small circle of Russians who keep in touch with Blake that lately the old traitor become rather misty-eyed about England and has expressed a desire to make one last visit here.

It is a fanciful notion that is unlikely to be fulfilled.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/brit-traitor-whose-information-led-14140548 

The Vicious Real-Life Gangsters Behind Martin Scorsese's Chilling Mega-Budget Movie 'The Irishman'

Danya Bazaraa at the British newspaper the Mirror offers a short piece and some interesting old photos of the late Frank Sheeran (seen in the above photo), a Philadelphia mob murderer and the subject of Martin Scorsese's upcoming film, The Irishman.  

The much anticipated film is based on I Heard You Paint Houses, by Sheeran and Charles Brandt, and.will star Robert De Niro as Sheeran and Joe Pesci, Al Pacino and Harvey Keitel will also appear in the film.

You can read the piece and check out the old photos via the below link:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/meet-vicious-real-life-gangsters-9985023

You can also read my Crime Beat column on Frank Sheeran via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2009/05/i-heard-you-paint-houses-man-who.html

And you can read my piece on the South Philly connection to the story via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2016/05/scorsese-assembles-hollywood-dream-team.html

Stalin's First British Spy Ernest Oldham May Have Caused The Second World War

Warren Manger at the British newspaper the Mirror offers a piece on the Soviet Union's first mole in the British government, predating Kim Philby and the Cambridge spy ring.

He was blown up on the front line during the First World War and helped to draft one of the most important peace treaties in history.

He even delivered coded messages to the King.

But Ernest Oldham was no national hero – he was one of Britain’s worst traitors.

As the first British spy to work for Stalin’s Russia, he sold vital secrets and spent the cash on chauffeur-driven cars, foreign holidays and endless bottles of booze.

The infamous Cambridge spy ring – including Kim Philby, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt– were still students when Oldham was selling secrets in the early 1930s.

As a civil servant at the Foreign Office, he was trusted with encrypted messages sent to embassies and consulates around the world.

And as a member of the team working on the Treaty of Versailles at the end of the First World War, his treachery could even have helped bring about the Second World War by enabling the Russians to scupper later negotiations between Germany and the rest of Europe.

The backlash from those failed talks caused such anger in Germany that it carried Adolf Hitler to power in 1933.

Not that Oldham lived to see all the consequences.

After four years of selling secrets he was found dead in a gas-filled kitchen in the upmarket Kensington area of London in September 1933, aged 39.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/stalins-first-british-spy-ernest-5831372

Ferguson Smith, Spycatcher Who Cracked Cold War Communist Spy Rings, Dies At 98

The British newspaper the Mirror offers a piece on former Chief Inspector Ferguson Smith, the U.K.'s supreme spycatcher.

With his neat military moustache, upright bearing, dapper dress and old-fashioned charm, Ferguson Smith seemed like any other ex-RAF gent enjoying his retirement.

The former Bomber Command flight lieutenant lived quietly in his home of more than 60 years, indulging his love of poetry and the countryside and doting on his wife, Margaret, until her death 10 years ago.

But few of his neighbours in Malden, Surrey, had any idea he was a decorated war hero, former personal bodyguard to ex-King the Duke of Windsor and, most remarkably, a supreme spycatcher.
Smith, who died at the age of 98 this month, hero died at the age of 98 this month, was instrumental in snaring the most notorious traitors and Russian spies of the 50s and 60s.

During a 36-year career in Special Branch, his quiet manner, obsession with detail and determination to go the extra mile saw him catch the infamous Portland spy ring – who were selling nuclear submarine secrets to Moscow – and arrest the most dangerous of all Red spies, George Blake.

Smith also helped jail naval attache-turned traitor John Vassall as well as Klaus Fuchs, the German physicist who sold details of Britain and America’s atomic bomb programme to the Soviets.

... Last night spy expert Neil Root said the nation owed a huge debt to spycatcher Smith – who must have been a master of mind games and tough James Bond 007-style counter-espionage techniques.
Neil, author of Twentieth Century Spies, said: “There was a real fear of Communist spies in the 50s and 60s.

“At the time espionage and counter espionage were about face to face contact, it was all meeting in dirty macs on park benches. It was much more psychological, you had to be able to read people.

“The things you see in James Bond now, that was the kind of stuff happening then. It was much more brutal, people were killed much more quickly.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/real-life-stories/ferguson-smith-special-branch-brought-2296496